1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electric pepper mill, more particularly one, which is equipped with such a conducting element that the electric circuit thereof will be opened when the pepper mill is placed in an upside down position; thus, the pepper mill will not be powered to work in an upside down position.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Electric pepper mills are very popular because they can save the users a lot of labor. Referring to FIGS. 10 and 11, a conventional pepper mill includes a main body 40, a pepper holding member 50, a power unit 60, and a grinding unit 70.
The main body 40 includes an upper cover 401, a cylindrical element 402, a transparent element 403, and a manual turning plate 405; the upper cover 401 is joined to an upper end of the cylindrical element 402 with three hooks 4011 thereof engaging corresponding trenches 4021 of the cylindrical element 402; the transparent element 403 is fitted around the cylindrical element 402; the cylindrical element 402 has a slot 4022, a protrusion 4023 sticking up form the lower end of the slot 4022; a switch 404 is up and down movably fitted to the slot 4022 with a mortise 4041 thereof being fitted over the protrusion 4023; the switch 404 is normally biased to an off position, and can be pushed down to an on position; the cylindrical element 402 is detachably joined to the manual turning plate 405 with engaging protrusions 4024 of the lower end thereof being fitted into engaging trenches of the turning plate 405, which are formed adjacent to pushed block 4051 of the turning plate 405; the cylindrical element 402 can be detached from the manual turning plate 405 when the pushed block 4051 are pushed.
A fixing chamber 406 is provided in the cylindrical element 402 while the power unit 60 has a motor holder 602 fixedly disposed in the fixing chamber 406, and a motor 601 held in the motor holder 602.
The grinding unit 70 includes a transmission shaft 701, which is connected to a central gear 702 of a gear combination joined to the shaft of the motor 601 at an upper end; the transmission shaft 701 is further screwed into an adjustment knob 703 arranged above the upper cover 401 so that fineness of ground pepper can be adjusted by means of the knob 703.
The manual turning plate 405 is joined to the upper end of the pepper holding member 50; the manual turning plate 405 is formed with stopping parts 4052, which are engaged with sloping stop protrusions 501 of the pepper holding member 50 to prevent the holding member 50 from turning together with the transmission shaft 701.
The pepper mill is not very convenient to use because the user has to keep on pressing the switch 404 in order for the pepper mill to work. If the pepper mill is equipped with such a switch instead of the one 404 that the pepper mill can continue working after the switch has been moved to the on position, the switch has to be moved back to the off position when the user wants to stop using the mill. Therefore, the pepper mill is still not very convenient to use with such switch.
To overcome the above-mentioned problem, the inventor of the present invention taught an improvement on an electric pepper mill in U.S. Pat. No. 6,830,205 filed on 11th Feb. 2003, and in European Community Patent application no. 0300367 filed on 18th Feb. 2003, which is equipped with such a conducting element that the pepper mill will start working to grind pepper when it is in an upright position, and such that the pepper mill will stop working as soon as it is moved to an upside-down position.